


Ghost of the Past

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 07:03:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14785736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: A cheesy haunted house attraction has more in store for Evie than she bargained for





	Ghost of the Past

**Author's Note:**

> from an anonymous request on tumblr

It wasn’t even an actual rusted iron fence. Plywood and spray paint. Mal would recognize the smell of spray paint from miles away. But some glow-in-the-dark paint slapped across the sign was an interesting touch, she had to give it that—the terribly overdone “BEWARE: Enter At Your Own Risk!” was not, however.  
  
“Do we realize it’s nearly March? Pretty lousy time for a haunted house,” Mal muttered.  
  
She knew spiderwebs, and she knew cobwebs, and whatever was strung up in the limbs of the trees and illuminated by torchlight in the nighttime haze was a poor imitation of either.  
  
“Theater department wanted a challenge,” Evie said simply, following Mal’s eyes up into the branches.  
  
“And you and I are their guinea pigs because…?”   
  
“Because we’re Isle girls,” that was the most pride Evie had ever leant to those words in her entire life, and that really wasn’t saying much. “We don’t know the meaning of the word fear, we  _are_  the meaning of the word fear. If the haunted house scares us, it’ll scare anyone.”  
  
“Yeah, well, good luck with that,” Mal shoved her hands in her pants pockets and started forward up the stone walkway (at least this was real stone, and not another plywood knockoff).  
  
She was able to hear Evie’s footsteps treading behind her, which was quite a remarkable feat with the “spooky” sound effects track blaring through the outdoor speakers. Rattling chains, thunder, creaks of floorboards…Mal had a dozen other ways she’d rather be spending her evening.  
  
“They didn’t try very hard, did they?” she asked skeptically over her shoulder before curling her fingers around the front doorknob and opening the way into the house.  
  
“They’ll work out the kinks after us,” Evie said behind her.  
  
It was lit only by candlelight inside, pillars of wax both tall and small burning in the dark. Right away the sound effects CD let loose a shrieking scream, right as the door swung shut behind the girls. Neither one so much as blinked.  
  
“That kind of sounded like Carlos,” Mal laughed. Evie did the same.  
  
Mal led the way for them, following the candles.  
  
“Want to hold my hand so you don’t get lost?” Mal wickedly teased, reaching her hand back behind her.  
  
Evie rolled her eyes.  
  
“You’re very funny.”  
  
A strikingly well-designed prop ghoul leaped out at them from a hall closet early on, but as Evie had said, she and Mal were Isle girls. They had come to know many _real_  ghouls in their years among the lost, a prop one meant nothing to them. They took the springing surprise in stride, merely ducking under its outstretched arms and moving along through the haunted house. Hidden projectors ran ghosts in front of them as they went on, more screams sounded, and more creatures leapt.  
  
“So we probably can’t get a refund for this, huh?” Mal sighed.  
  
“M, we got in for free.”  
  
The stairs creaked on their own, without the help of sound effects, as the two made their way up to the next floor. At this point it wasn’t so much a haunted house as it was a walking tour. Up the stairs was a long corridor, antique looking mirrors lining the walls on either side. Mal imagined the only scary thing about this was that Evie couldn’t properly see her reflection in the darkness. The sounds were louder up here, the speakers closer and amplifying better. Mal was bored. If she had a watch she’d be haplessly checking it by now, wishing the minutes would tick by faster and lead them right out of here. She dared say the whole mediocre affair was even putting her right to sleep.  
  
So imagine how her heavy eyes snapped back into focus when the piercing sound of glass shattering split the air above their heads, and how her heart kickstarted itself into a beating frenzy when Evie screamed and dropped to her knees.  
  
Mal’s mind raced at eighty miles an hour, different trains of thought smashing violently into each other as her automatic instinct was that Evie had been hurt, that she’d been pierced and struck and torn by the wreckage of glass.  
  
“Evie!!”   
  
Mal fell down next to her, hands already running over Evie’s body, feeling around in the dark for shards or the sticky wetness of blood. But growing up on The Isle made checking for injuries second nature, and it didn’t take long to feel and figure that Evie was unharmed, save for a terrible fit of shaking as she covered her head with her arms and ducked protectively into herself.  
  
“Evie, what?? What happened??” Mal demanded, suddenly helpless.  
  
“Mal, don’t let her near me,  _please,_ I haven’t done anything!!”  
  
“Who? What are you talking about?”  
  
Evie didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. She trembled so badly it was a wonder her words didn’t come out through chattering teeth, and still she curled herself tighter and tighter into a frightened ball, as if she could disappear inwards and vanish forever if she just shrank small enough. And suddenly, something clicked in Mal’s head. Something clicked horribly.  
  
Days on The Isle when Mal would call on her best friend, visiting the castle to find the strange clues of the mirrors smashed, Evie’s eyes red and her hair disheveled, the Evil Queen nowhere in sight. An odd series of occurrences, and a connection Mal never quite made. The queen’s vanity would always have the many mirrors replaced at once, but still Mal would return days later to broken frames and shattered glass again—and sometimes to Evie with the angry red lines of unexplained cuts.  
  
“…Evie?” Mal gently put her hand on Evie’s back, feeling the trembles beneath her fingertips. “…E, what did she do to you?”  
  
“I didn’t do anything wrong!!”  
  
“Evie, I know, but what did  _she_  do? Your mother. All those times I came over and the mirrors were broken…”  
  
Evie slowly lifted her head, taking a fearful peek around. The mirrors. The mirrors on the walls to her left and right were intact, not a one shattered or smashed. Not a one glaring her own twisted and distorted reflection back at her through the splinters and cracks. It had only been the sound effects going off above.  
  
“…She’s not here,” Evie realized.  
  
“No, she’s not,” Mal soothingly rubbed Evie’s back, her hand moving on instinct alone. “Evie, what happened?”  
  
Evie’s eyes were suddenly so far away, miles away. Mal leaned around to peer into her face and saw the candlelight glinting off a dulled, vacant expression.  
  
“…She would get so angry, Mal. If a hair was out of place, if my eyeliner was smudged…if I tripped up and missed a curtsy or a ‘yes ma'am’…”  
  
“She went around breaking all the mirrors?”  
  
Mal had already figured as much, but it was another thing entirely to hear it out loud.  
  
“Like a madwoman,” Evie nodded somewhat frantically. “She’d scream, and shriek, she’d throw whatever she could get her hands on into the mirrors…sometimes even me.”  
  
Mal remembered the cuts, Evie’s smooth and flawless skin marred by red. She imagined such a thing would only invoke the Evil Queen’s ire even more. Evie’s voice was choked with tears when she spoke again.  
  
“When my hair was a mess she’d grab me by it, make me look at myself in the broken glass,” she cried.  
  
Prop ghouls and canned thunder seemed far more paltry now than they had before. Mal stood up with purpose and left Evie’s side just long enough to seek out the cords and wires hooked up to the wall speakers and yank them out of place, cutting off the cheesy horror noises and plunging the house into silence. When she returned to Evie she crouched down in front of her, tucking a hand underneath her chin to lift Evie’s empty eyes up to hers.  
  
“E, please…you  _know_  none of that was your fault. You have to know that.”  
  
“But if I had just—”  
  
“You are beautiful,” Mal interrupted, her voice firm. “And you always have been. Your mother didn’t rage because you were imperfect, she did it because you were perfect, and she hated it. More perfect than her. The real fairest of them all.”  
  
Evie sniffed, hugging herself tighter.  
  
“And it was horrible, your mother was horrible, but  _you_  were not, E. Nothing she did to you was ever your fault,” Mal went on.  
  
Evie never seemed to scar, like her beauty simply wouldn’t allow it, but still it was as if Mal could suddenly see the ghostly aftermath of Evie’s encounters with her mother’s mirrors on her skin. All those times Evie had suffered, in silence, never speaking a word of such atrocities to Mal. All those times Mal had been there right within reach, unable to comfort her out of simple ignorance.  
  
“…I’m sorry, Evie,” Mal whispered. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
“It’s okay…”  
  
“It’s not,” Mal said right away. “But listen to me, E, you really are the most perfect girl I’ve ever known. Beautiful inside and out. And you didn’t deserve  _any_  of that from the Evil Queen…okay?”  
  
Evie wiped her eyes as Mal squeezed her shoulder, keeping physical contact, letting Evie know and feel that they were together.  
  
“Okay, Evie?” Mal repeated.  
  
Evie nodded slowly after a while.  
  
“…Okay.”  
  
Mal took Evie’s hands and pulled her to her feet, never letting go even after they’d stood up.  
  
“I guess the haunted house did its job,” Evie grimly noted.  
  
“Forget this place, let’s get out of here.”  
  
Mal laced her fingers through Evie’s and briskly led her back towards the stairs. Evie squeezed the hand inside of hers tight.  
  
“I wish I had you back then, Mal.”  
  
Her voice was so small. If those stupid sound effects had still been going Mal wouldn’t have even heard her at all.  
  
“You did, you just didn’t know it. And you have me now,” Mal assured her, turning to face Evie at the top of the stairs. “You have me now, and you’ll have me always. What did we learn from The Isle, E?”  
  
Evie looked around the room, around at the mirrors on the walls and the rafters high above, at all the little sights and nuances of the haunted house.  
  
“…Nothing’s as scary when we’re together,” she answered, a tiny smile peeking through.  
  
“That’s right. Nothing’s as scary when we’re together, and we will always be together.”  
  
“You promise, Mal?”  
  
A hug, Mal pulling Evie close and holding her in her arms. She trembled no more.  
  
“I promise, Evie.”


End file.
